September 17th 2009

“LUNDY : South westerly – calm. Fair to good and falling. Squalls later.”

My alarm goes at 4am.

I haven’t slept much… but then I haven’t slept much in days.

I get my work boots on and get in the Land Rover. As I drive to the unit base on the National Trust’s Stackpole Estate, I am kept awake by a desire to avoid smearing the myriad of wildlife that use the road as their own at this time in the morning. (I have no grievance against them and I have to drive the actors in this car later. I fear the cull-splatter may disturb the thespianic preparation.) I am listening to the shipping forecast on the radio. For the first time ever I have a really good reason to want to know how the weather on this particular area of our waters – the patch of the Atlantic off the Pembrokeshire coast known to seafarers as Lundy – will effect my day.

For the first time I am about to have my own crew making ‘a real movie’. It’s exciting. But I can’t help but also think about all the millions of things that could easily go wrong between now and the end of the shoot in five weeks time… if we get there at all.

The schedule and budget are tighter than my amazing set photographer’s skinny jeans…. I wonder, if we do derail, what it will be that finally ends the ride.

I haven’t even started yet and I know already that at least two key members of the crew are camped on the boarders of insanity – primed to invade that land of lunacy if there is the slightest increase in pressure… and pressure is the one thing I have in abundance for both…

But then as I pull up at the old farm Manor House I see the giant Kitchen truck. We are a small film compared to Nottingham and Harry Potter that have both filmed in Pembrokeshire this summer and yet somehow we’ve managed to afford a catering truck that may have room for Knight Rider in the back, as well as the kitchen. It glows and steams in the dawn light and excitement swells like a wave inside me. I smell the bacon and the coffee that will fuel the nearly fifty crew.

I greet the location manager who arrives seconds later, and then my partner in production, Kelly Broad who looks like she’s arrived for London Fashion week. As the rest of them rock up I greet them with overly gung-ho slaps of encouragement. Knowing that I haven’t even closed the finance on the film that I am now DEFINITELY shooting, I wonder if one of the crazy people is me. In fact maybe no one would try what we are about to do if they aren’t a few rashers short of a fry up. Its sobering…

But – here’s the thing… This is the last moment I have time to consider it.

Before I know it the four actors, Benedict Cumberbatch, JJ Feild, Tom Burke and Adam Robertson are in costume and we’re heading to the first shot… The boys are loading the cart that will carry Benedict’s character, James, on his journey to Barafundle Bay… and already I’m putting out fires… Telling the designers to find more kit to weigh down the cart (it’s a problem because we need it all duplicated for the second unit version of the cart that will be filmed with doubles). I’m also cutting lines from the script, still trying to shrink the scenes… And we’re choosing the tree Bill will carry and we’re wondering if we actually have permission to use the local cows as background artists… and onwards…

And in the blink of an eye… with some disasters narrowly averted we’re on the last shot of the day. Literally as quick as that! With the sun setting behind the headland to the west I tell a white lie to the director about a bi-law (I just invented) that prevents Adam Robertson from strolling naked as the script dictates, in the area we had chosen for the shot initially (which is now too far away). We swing the camera round and shoot in a hurry and with failing light that does wonders to shield his manhood, Adam strides naked across the hillside in front of two extras… (played by an old teacher of mine from the school I had attended just down the road)… And suddenly we wrap Day 1.

And we’re ferrying the crew back to unit base for a cold beer and to give them the call sheet for day 2. Matt Hanson, the 1st Ad, slaps me on the back. I’m exhausted… We all are, but I can’t show it. It was amazing and hilarious and fun and terrifying…

The boys did the magic trick that only great actors know how to do. They have conveyed the freedom of the trip they’re on – alongside the love and antagonisms of real friendship in just a few moments of film passing behind a lens. We have one day in the can and they look like they’ve been pushing Benedict in that fucking cart forever already.

I check the last shoot site for rubbish (we will leave everywhere we go on this breathtaking landscape untouched) and head back to unit base…

Along the farm track I pass a farm worker bringing the cows in. I stop to wait for them to pass and he nods and says “Well, you had a nice day for it, boy! “

I nod and drive on and remember how my day started “Calm. Fair to good and falling. Squalls later.…”. And I realise I don’t have enough time to sleep before tomorrow.